


reaper76 week '18

by bonebo



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, Mer AU, Reaper76 Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-15
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-03-05 08:30:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13384050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bonebo/pseuds/bonebo
Summary: Day 1: “War buddies” - war/battlesDay 2: “They loved each other” - love/affectionDay 3: “Thankful” - gratitude/admirationDay 4: “Defended” - defense/supportDay 5: “Downfall” - falling out/heartacheDay 6: “Questionable actions” - secrets/revelationsDay 7: “Depth of relationship” - shared lifetimes/togetherness/alternate universes





	1. Chapter 1

The sky is the faded color of a dying cornfield--turned brown and sickly yellow by the smoke and smog that chokes the air in King’s Row. Jack Morrison’s ears ring faintly as he lies face-down on a stretch of cracked pavement, the pulse-rifle clutched in one shaking fist and its muzzle still faintly smoking from the rapid fire he’d used to take down the Bastion unit nearby.

He allows himself one quick breath that scorches his lungs--a short rest, one heartbeat, then two--before he pushes himself back upright on muscles that ache from days of overuse, and looks around blearily. 

His job isn’t done.

No--because on the other side of the street, behind the unit that Jack had just dispatched, is his Commander: Gabriel Reyes, lying against a large piece of rubble with his face streaked in blood and his eyes closed, his Hellfire twins lying lonely on the ground nearby. His eyes crack open as Jack comes running over, one pupil blown wide and the other a sharp pinprick, and settle somewhere off to Jack’s right as he wetly breathes, “Morrison…”

“Hey, Gabe,” Jack says, cupping Gabriel’s face in his hands and using his fingertips to feel along his commander’s neck--while the concussion is obvious, vertebrae or disc trauma would be harder to spot. Jack lets out a breath of relief when his questing fingers don’t find anything out of the norm on Gabriel’s musculature. “That was a close one, wasn’t it? You were almost human hamburger.”

Gabriel nods slowly, his eyes still unnervingly focused on some spot beside Jack, his gaze lacking the sharp clarity that usually accompanies his cunning wit. “Yeah...close. Too close…”

“You can say that again.” Jack grabs at his belt for one of the portable fields he carries, and snaps it active before setting it on the ground between them, casting them both in the soft golden glow of the biotics. “But I’m here. I gotcha, Gabe.”

Gabe nods at that, something reverent and peaceful in his expression; he slowly looks up from the field generator and instead settles his gaze on Jack’s face, and manages a lopsided grin that tears the busted wound on his bottom lip open wider.

“If we get out of this alive, I think I’m going to marry you,” Reyes says; and despite the blood that soaks down his dirty skin from the gash across his hairline, the dazed look in his glassy brown eyes, Jack can’t help but think that, in this one moment, he’s never loved this man more.

“That’s plenty of motivation to see this through, Commander,” he murmurs with a bloodstained smile, and helps Reyes to his feet to the blessed sound of Amari’s voice over the comm-link, telling them of the shelter she’s found for the night.

It won’t be much, Jack knows--a blown-out building if they’re lucky, a stretch of grass behind some ruined cars if they’re not--but that’s okay. 

He has Reyes and a promise to keep him warm at night, and that is more than enough.


	2. Chapter 2

“It’s over,” Jack says again, like he still can’t believe the words are real; and Gabriel laughs around the rim of his champagne glass, hooking an arm around Jack and tugging him in closer, not caring how it makes the suitjacket he wears wrinkle up around his waist.

“Over,” he agrees, leaning in to press a kiss to Jack’s scruffy cheek--and he can hear the snap of the cameras around them, the press invited to this black tie affair ravenously leaping on the chance to capture a moment of the great war heroes being simply human, but he can’t find it in himself to care. When Jack shifts away he’s smiling, and there’s more to the ruddiness of his cheeks than just the champagne he’s been sipping since the party started.

“Excuse me--Commander Reyes?” one reporter asks, daring to come forward and holding out her microphone toward Gabriel’s face. “If you don’t mind, sir--what was that about?” She looks between them, and supplies with a grin, “A show of camaraderie, after all you two have gone through?”

Gabriel manages a laugh, turning away as Jack tugs lightly on his fingers, leading him toward the door--away, to somewhere cozy and warm where they can have their own private, more intimate celebration. 

“Yeah,” he says, and the confession is sweet on his tongue; his cheeks are starting to hurt from smiling. “Something like that.”


	3. Chapter 3

In retrospect, Gabriel should have known something was up when he stepped off the jet to find Overwatch’s Strike-Commander standing on the tarmac like a beacon, bright and blue and beautiful and so out of place amid the grey and black and red of Blackwatch.

“Jack?”

“Hey.” Jack’s smile is dazzling, and makes Gabriel feel like he’s come home more than the sight of his HQ does. He turns on one heel to walk with Gabriel back toward base. “How was the mission?”

“Fine,” Gabriel answers, watching Jack out of the corner of his eye, trying to read his lover’s face. There was a smile pulling at Jack’s pink lips that Gabriel hadn’t seen in a while, and it excited and scared him in equal parts. “Although I sent you the documentation on the flight back, so I don’t know why you’re asking.”

Jack’s grin splits wider. “Am I not allowed to make friendly conversation with my favourite black ops commander?”

“Not in the hallway where anyone could hear, no,” Gabriel hisses, and finds himself satisfied by Jack’s sudden, cowed look. “There are rules to this shit, Morrison. You know that.”

Jack sighs, his shoulders falling slightly. “Yeah, I do.”

And Gabriel has half a mind to apologize, but--no. He won’t. He’s tired and he’s sore and he’s jet-lagged, and all he wants is to lay down and get some rest; but he cares too much about this, whatever this is, to let the wrong people find out and ruin it for both of them.

So he will protect them--from Overwatch, from Blackwatch, from Jack himself--just like he always has.

The rest of the walk is quiet; Jack is too chagrined and chastised to speak, and Gabriel finds his tongue heavy in his mouth. He can still taste the acrid, acid air, still has sand between his teeth from the driving wind. Down the hallway, something falls with a loud crash against tile--Gabriel startles hard at the noise, hand snapping to the holster at his hip, only to find the warmth of Jack’s palm serving as a barrier between him and his Hellfire.

Jack’s fingers tangle with his, lightly. Gabriel doesn’t say a word.

When they reach his quarters, Jack’s smile is back. It’s different, now; cheeky. Shy. Like he’s done something that he knows could get him in trouble.

“What did you do,” Gabriel mutters, typing in his access code and glancing to Jack as the door slides open. “Jack…”

But then he takes a step forward, looks inside, and the words halt in his throat.

“...what is this?”

This is the lights dimmed in his room, a handful of candles on the desk burning sweet vanilla scent into the air; there’s a bottle of lotion on the bedside table, beside an unopened box of dark chocolate squares imported from Switzerland. 

It’s simple, and it’s perfect. Gabriel looks up at Jack, his jaw slack, corners of his mouth turned up in a disbelieving smile. “How...Jack, what is all this for?”

A pair of strong arms grab him around the waist, pulling him into the solid warmth of Jack’s chest. “I’m just trying to show you the depth of my gratitude, love,” Jack says, his voice a soft murmur against the back of Gabriel’s neck; and the huskiness, the sincerity, is enough to make him shudder.

“I think I have time for that,” Gabriel says, and reaches back to close the door.


	4. Chapter 4

Pinned down in a narrow alley with a gang of terrorists on both sides, Reaper has never been more certain that this time he will not escape.

He can’t call for help--this had been a solo mission with only his own interests and motivations, unseen and unapproved by Talon; not to mention that his backup is five states away--and with his Hellfire twins lying on the opposite side of the alley, blocked by one criminal with a pistol and a leer, he’s weaponless. His only saving grace is that the initial fight damaged his nanites so badly that they’re going haywire, making pieces of his body disappear before they can be kicked or maimed; and even that is a double-edged sword, as the same technology that keeps his legs from being solid enough to be shot makes them too weak to support his weight, keeping him from running. He can’t wrangle his body under control enough to make it listen to his will.

All he can do is wait, and hope that they lose interest in him before something worse happens.

“I’ve seen you around here,” one of the thugs snarls, leaning in close and slapping Reaper across the face with the butt of his gun; he can taste the blood that surges into his mouth, thick and oily on his tongue. “Some fucking freak on our turf, thinking you can intrude on us with no consequences…”

“We don’t want you here,” another thug spits, running up on Gabriel’s left and punting him in the jaw with enough force to have his mask cracking, to make him see stars. When his head doggedly swings back around, the outline of the gang in front of him is blurry. 

“We’re going to make you disappear.”

“You fucked with the wrong crowd this time, freakshow.”

He hears a familiar set of clicks, and his gaze cuts to the side to find himself staring down the barrels of his own twins. Were he not already grievously injured, the insult would sting enough to spur him into action; as it is, the most he can do is reach out for his shotguns and fall forward, barely catching himself on his palms before he smacks into the pavement. It earns a chorus of laughter from the gang, and Reaper lowers his head, staring down at the dark drips of blood on the ground below him.

But then there’s another noise--something fast, rapid-fire, and Reaper snaps his head up to see the gang scattering, fleeing from where one of the thugs lies dead on the ground. Bullets spark off the ground at their feet, catch a few more in the calves and ankles; the man with the Hellfire twins whips around with both shotguns drawn and tries to fire, but the weapons are heavy in inexperienced hands, spraying pellets wide like they know they are not being held by their master. After the fifth shot goes wide the thug drops the guns and turns to bolt, and finds himself cut off by a trio of rockets that explode into the alley wall beside him, spraying shrapnel.

Reaper stares at the smoking rubble, at the body that lies, broken, within the pieces of brick and rock; and when he turns his head toward the source of the bullets and the blaster-fire, he already knows what he’ll see.

Soldier 76.

The sight of the old soldier has Reaper snarling in the back of his throat, the sound made wet by the blood still bubbling over his tongue. He pushes himself upright despite the protests in his arms, and pretends he doesn’t feel the pain of his hands giving out, dissolving into thick black smoke against his will.

“Get the fuck out of here,” he hisses, sitting back against the wall--his glare tracks Soldier as he walks slowly down the alley toward him, and Reaper refuses to give name to the emotions that surge up into his throat, clawing at him like thorns. “No one asked you to be here, you’re lucky I--”

“Shut up.” 

Soldier 76 pauses when he reaches the discarded shotguns, and gives them a cursory glance before kicking them over against the wall, where Reaper still sits with his eyes narrowed and his arms nothing more than mist. “You’ll need those, I think. I won’t always be here.”

“Good,” Reaper spits, lumbering up on unsteady legs, smoke pouring from his bared teeth to billow out the cracks in his mask. “I don’t need your pity, old man--”

“You don’t have it.” That emotionless visor holds Reaper’s gaze for a moment longer before he turns away; nonchalant, unworried. The corpses he walks by are growing cold, and he feels a sudden surge of petty glee when he realizes he won’t be the one blamed for them--but that’s where they are, now. 

This is what they have become.

“Don’t make me have to defend you again,” Soldier says; but when he turns back around, the alley is empty.


	5. Chapter 5

Gabriel knew it would be bad as soon as he got the alert requesting him of Jack’s call, flagged urgent.

He just didn’t know it would be this bad.

_“I can’t believe you’ve been doing this shit behind my back.” Jack thumbs through the folders on his desk, each one making his brows furrow deeper than the last. “Human experimentation, trafficking, torture--what the hell, Gabe?”_

“Look.” Gabriel rubs at his temple with one hand, willing his migraine to go away--they’ve only gotten worse since Moira’s ‘treatment’ started, and while he doesn’t have the time to be scared of just what that could mean, he knows this conference call isn’t helping any. “You want results, and I want to give them to you. This is the most efficient way--”

_“Most efficient? It’s illegal! Are you even listening to yourself right now? When the UN finds out about this they’re going to have a field day!”_

Gabriel pauses. “...who said they have to find out?”

There’s silence for a moment--a sharp inhale of breath on Jack’s end of the line--before his voice returns, slow and cautious. _“Gabe. You can’t expect me to--I can’t hide this, someone will find out and when they do--”_

“No one has to know.” And Gabriel’s heart is hammering in his throat, his fingers tapping restlessly on his desk, leaving bits of ash with each contact; he just needs more time, just a little more time to get everything figured out, and then this will be over. Blackwatch will be able to hand Overwatch the greatest technology advancement in the modern age, and everyone will be too busy praising Morrison and his fine men to worry about just who was pulling the strings in the shadows, or how the tech came to be.

Gabriel knows it will work. He just needs a little more time to set the final pieces in play.

“Just think about it, Jack,” he urges, looking into the camera and hoping his expression can be read: hoping Jack can see the determination, the plea. “Overwatch will go down as the most successful organization the era has ever seen, and who will be at its head? Jack Morrison, Strike-Commander, getting all of the praise.”

He can see the uncertainty in Jack’s downcast eyes, the unhappy twist to his mouth, and it spurs Gabriel into desperation. “Jack,” he starts, leaning forward, wishing he could reach out through the camera itself and touch that strong jaw, all the way in Switzerland. “Jack...talk to me. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

_“...you want to know what I’m thinking?”_

“Yes. Of course I do.”

Jack looks up then, and his face is guarded--the poster boy that Gabriel recognizes from the interviews and press conferences, the persona Jack hides behind when he has to make his toughest decisions.

_“This isn’t you, Gabriel.”_

And the line goes dead.


	6. Chapter 6

It’s been one week since the fighting stopped--since the Soldier and the Reaper came together again, no longer a vigilante and a mercenary but instead two old souls, worn down by a hateful world that had forgotten them--and yet this is the first time that Jack has seen Gabriel outside of the cloak and armor that he’s lived in for years.

He’s still handsomely fit, his body a solid block of smooth lines and hard muscle, still has the strong jaw and proud lift of his chin that Jack first fell for, all those years ago; but his dark skin is almost grey, now, saturated by the oil that runs in his veins, and though his eyes are still bright with intelligence and sharp wit they’re bloodshot, too, crimson bleeding into the sclera like ink in water. Where he was rugged before, with enough marks on his skin to tell the story of an adventurous life--now his body is a mapwork of scars, speaking instead to the horrors he’s undergone.

Jack can’t say he’s disappointed by what he finds; a little sad, maybe. A little guilty. 

But then he notices the glint of silver at Gabriel’s throat, and his heart skips a beat.

“Are those…?” And Jack’s reaching for the dogtags before he realizes it, his jaw slack; Gabriel startles away from him a little, his hand snapping up automatically, cautious and guarding. Jack tears his gaze away from the tags, from the _J. Morrison_ stamped into the stained and scarred metal, to look up at Gabriel.

In this moment they are not Reaper and Soldier--instead they’re young again, two men with the weight of the world on their shoulders and SEP on their sleeves, hiding out on the roof to drink smuggled-in booze from the bottle and kiss under the stars, trading their only possessions so they would never again be alone.

Jack’s voice is strained. “...all these years...you’ve kept them?”

“Of course I kept them,” Gabriel says--but his voice is softer now, something raw in it, something exposed. His eyes dart away, like he can’t stand to face Jack anymore, now that this revelation lies between them. “...after everything...they were all I had of you. I couldn’t let them go.”

Jack stares at him a moment longer, searching for words--but he quickly realizes there is nothing he can say. Instead he pulls his own battered set of tags from where they lie safely tucked under his shirt, and falls into the warmth of Gabriel’s embrace.


	7. Chapter 7

They met over a year ago--with Jack on the run from hunters and lost in the unfamiliar deep waters, chased by a sleek wraith named Gabriel back toward the surface he knows--and yet, as he comes upon the mer laid out and sunning himself on one of the large boulders that line the rocky shore, Jack finds himself struck again by the beauty of the mer he’s lucky enough to call his mate.

Gabriel stretches across the sun-warmed boulder like a liquid shadow, his head tipped back and long, dark tail swishing lazily through the shallow water; his eyes are closed, dark-mottled arms loosely crossed across his chest with the spiny fins along them relaxed and low. The longer, darker fins that trail along his hips wave slowly in the gentle waves as they splash against the shore, and Jack smiles at the contentment coming from the other mer as he swims up.

Gabriel cracks an eye open as the water around him is disturbed, his fingers perking up on reflex--but as soon as he can make out the glimmer of Jack’s rich blue scales amid the pale water, the shine of his wet, golden hair, he relaxes against against the stone.

“You’re back early,” he murmurs, stretching his arms over his head and flexing his claws through the air; the toned muscles of his abdomen ripple beneath his bronzed skin, immediately drawing Jack’s gaze. “And yet, I see no fish with you...was the hunting that poor?”

“Maybe,” Jack says, draping across the stone beside Gabriel and tucking himself up close, letting his fingers trail through the dark scruffy stubble along Gabriel’s strong jaw. “Or, maybe I already ate what I caught, and didn’t bother to bring anything back for my lazy mate.” 

Gabriel snorts, rolling his eyes; and when Jack pulls a silvery mackerel out of the shallows with his free hand, waving it teasingly through the air, Gabriel's grin turns toothy.

“I’m going to eat you, someday,” he muses, grabbing for the fish and letting his touch linger, talons catching lightly on Jack’s fingertips. He tears into the catch with a low, growling purr, closing his eyes to the sound of Jack’s laughter.

“No you're not,” Jack tells him, sidling up closer with the sunlight making his scales shine--and Gabriel hums and pulls him in closer, and thinks to himself that he's inclined to agree.


End file.
